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Monday, August 11, 2008

The Gates, York and the Dam

Sunday found us at the Gates of the Mountains. It's a wonderful limestone-cliffed canyon that the Lewis & Clark expedition paddled through over 200 years ago. Now it's done by tour boat (there's been tours every year for over 120 years!). A little disappointed that we didn't get to see any wildlife, but the ride was relaxing, and educational too! There's a major campground where the boat docks to let people picnic or hike or go potty. Unfortunately, there was a flash flood the day before, so activity was severely limited, with most of it closed for clean-up. We did manage to find a spot to take a picture. If you go to Dana's site, you can see a slideshow of the pictures she took from the boat (actually, from the whole day...).

Next stop was the York Bar. The bar that I try to get to everytime Moose or Kamey is in town. Rachel and I have been there a couple of times too! Consistently voted every year as having the best burgers in "town" (even though the bar is 20 miles from Helena!). I drank Rainier (which she hadn't seen in years), and, thanks to Moose's suggestion, Dana started out with a Caesar. You people are sick... However, she got hers for free, since they'd run out of mix. She ended up drinking Moose Drool for the rest of out time there.

Note the "glow" in her face, and the condensation on the glasses. No A/C at this place, and there had been a bit of rain, so things were a bit humid... No, I still haven't fixed the wipers. Dana wasn't terribly amused, but Cam loved watching me try to fix them as we were driving...

Before leaving the bar, I had to take this picture. Patrons will sign a dollar bill and plaster it up on the walls (hundreds of dollar bills, dozens of years worth). You can find mine and Moose's up there! Click it to big it to see better!

Our final drive was through the mountains some more, to the base of the Canyon Ferry Dam, then up around to the top to see the lake. From there, it was back into town, another quick mini-tour of places we hadn't seen the night before, and back to her room for some beers and conversation. All in all, a pretty good 24 hours!

I met up with them for breakfast this morning, pointed them towards the west and how to get to I-90, and we said our good-byes. I'm relatively certain she'll have another vlog posted tonight from Spokane. Be sure to check out what she's posted so far! You'll even get to see yours truly choking on a Thin Mint crumb. I'm nothing if not entertaining!